


Here At Last

by thecomebackkids99



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: 8x04 Spec Fic, And he doesn't know what to say, Angst, F/M, Fluff, Lots of drama, Oliver is shocked, There's some sweet moments, as is everyone else
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-04
Updated: 2019-11-04
Packaged: 2021-01-23 00:54:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21311431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecomebackkids99/pseuds/thecomebackkids99
Summary: A 8x04 spec fic of what happens right after Mia, William, and Connor are transported to the bunker.
Relationships: Oliver Queen & Mia Smoak, Oliver Queen/Felicity Smoak, William Clayton & Mia Smoak, William Clayton & Oliver Queen
Comments: 2
Kudos: 193





	Here At Last

**Author's Note:**

> Oh man.....hello all!!! I hope everyone has been well!!! This is my first fic I've posted since August of 2018, and I think it's the first one I've written since then. My sisters and I stopped watching Arrow last year for several reasons, but we made the decision to watch the last season because y'know...it's the last season. So far it's been great! And so I decided to try writing something again. This may be my last one, or not. We'll see. This could be labeled as OOC, or perfectly awesome. I don't know. Either way, enjoy!!!

Oliver tried to get his mouth to move, or his brain. Or _anything_. But his whole body shut down for the first time since his first year on the island. He couldn’t move. All he could do was stare at the three … children who leaned against the row of computers.

The girl said ‘dad’. Had he heard that right, or were all his dreams about his family catching up to him? Possibly. But not. Because the girl—woman—who stood a few feet from him wasn’t just some crazy, bloody lunatic with a quiver and a hood that looked like his.

Mia.

His daughter stood there, crying and bleeding. With that look in her eyes that he’d seen for years whenever he looked in a mirror. _Oh, God, no_. Couldn’t he have saved her from this? She would always be wrapped into this world, from the moment she exited the womb, but didn’t _something_ that he’d done save her from that look that told the world how much it hurt? How much she had seen?

All his efforts had been for naught.

He wanted her to be safe. To be free of the nightmares he suffered, free to love without fear of hurt, free to be whoever she wanted to be. Not a vigilante. He couldn’t spare William from that, but he could do it for Mia.

William. His eyes turned toward the boy to the right of his daughter. Not possible. There was no way that whoever did this managed to get both of his children into the bunker. But this man looked so much like the little boy he sent away out of fear, but so different. Like he too, had seen hell. Maybe not like Mia. In a different way. But here he stood.

People were moving behind him, asking him what was happening, and John had moved to stand next to him. That he registered, because he could feel his friend’s pain right next to his. But his body still couldn’t move. Or wanted to. Because if this were a dream, he didn’t want it to end. Yes, his children had taken the paths he did everything he could to help them avoid. But they were alive. Here. And he was here.

And blood streamed down his daughter’s throat.

“Mia …” his throat clenched, not unlike the feeling whenever he said Felicity’s name. “You look …” Just like your mother, he finished in his head. Because his voice couldn’t do it. Couldn’t even begin to express what he felt when he looked at her, and William.

“Dad.” His son moved forward, stumbling a step. “_Dad_.” He stopped, his head swiveling around to Mia and the other boy, who still hadn’t moved from his spot, a look of horror on his face. “What…how…”

Exactly. What and how. The Monitor could be behind this. Or Barry. It would be the first time the kid time traveled and did some good. Was this good? Yes. But was it right? How could he even begin to understand who stood before him?

“I’m sorry…what year is it?” William’s voice pitched high.

“It’s 2019,” Dinah answered. He would thank her later for answering, because his brain could barely even register what year it was. For all he knew he got sent to wherever his kids belonged.

“Oh. My. God.” William choked back a cry and spun toward Mia and the other kid. They seemed to exchange a silent conversation, giving Oliver a moment to take a deep breath. How many years of training had he had? Certainly not training to deal with _this_. But if he had any hope of surviving the next few minutes or hours, he needed to find his voice. At least that. His children could be gone at any moment. Was he going to waste it by being unable to process?

“William.” He made a move toward his son, who moved in front of Mia. Protecting her? He wished he could reach out and pull her into his arms, and wipe away the blood and tears from her face. But if she was anything like him, he would be on the ground with an arrow at his neck if he tried right now.

His son looked back at Mia and reached his hand back to touch her arm, guiding her a few steps forward. To protect him. “We’re from 2040. And I…I never saw you again. You _promised_.”

Oliver took a deep breath. The words were implied. Maybe not even meant to hurt. But they stabbed him in the heart, more painful than Ra’s a Gul’s sword through his chest. Until now, a small, tiny part of his soul thought he would live. Thea was right; how many times had he escaped death? He couldn’t die. Not yet. The universe owed him more than that.

But it didn’t. Not really. The universe didn’t owe him anything. It only took. Took his mom, his dad. Felicity. Mia. William. And finally, his life. But maybe this—whatever this was, was a gift. Like the alien abduction, but this time, _real_.

Mia and William Queen stood before him. Hurt. Mad. But they were real. Not from a different earth. Just a different time. Where he no longer resided. Just a gravestone. _God. _Ten years ago, he wanted death. Just wipe his pathetic self off the earth. Now all he wanted was five more years. Five more days. Five more minutes. _Please, God_.

“I’m so sorry.” He whispered, thankful his voice remained normal. “I’m so sorry.”

“I don’t understand.” Mia stayed right next to William. The façade he could guess she lived by wavered even more. It would come crashing down, or she would figure out how to build it back up. “How are we here? _Why_ are we here?”

“I don’t know.” Oliver glanced at Diggle. Like he would know. His friend’s eyes didn’t leave the boy behind his kids. JJ? Another kid? John and Lyla would have more children. His brain couldn’t handle anything else right now.

Oliver moved his gaze back to Mia. Whoever did this to her would pay, in the future or not, and it wouldn’t be a kind arrow to the leg. She put her hand on William’s arm and shuffled closer to him. He wanted to reach out to her, but didn’t know how. He changed, what? Five diapers? Put her to bed only a handful of times. Felicity loved laying with her in their bed while she fell asleep while he worked out. He held her for hours every day, but she was a baby.

How was he supposed to do this?

Mia swayed, and Oliver sprung forward as she crumped. He caught her in his arms and scooped her up to keep her from hitting the floor. “Hey, hey.” She looked at him with the blear of pain in her eyes, and he couldn’t help but smile. His beautiful, bloody, angry daughter. _Here_. “You look just like your mom.”

“D-Dad.”

“I’ve got you. You’re safe. I’m here.” _Daddy’s here_. He said that when she was a few weeks old, screaming her head off in her crib, parents oblivious because their sound system failed. He had run in the house for something and found her, face bright red and eyes swollen. Flailing arms. He swooped her up and put her against his chest.

_Daddy’s here_.

Leaving Diggle and the kid to figure it out, Oliver hurried down the steps to the med bay, and instructed William to remove Mia’s quiver. It took him a minute, awkwardly tugging and pulling, and he dumped it onto the floor. “I’m going to lay you down, okay?”

She nodded, and winced. It was more painful for a Queen to do that than actually get hurt.

As he helped her to lay down, he shot a look at William. The kid had definitely done this a few times. “What happened?”

“Uh…”

Mia glared. “Don’t.”

Okay, then. “I just need to know what happened. Not who did it.” Not yet, anyways. He’d give the guy a head start before he went after him and beat him within an inch of his life.

“A sword,” William moved away from Mia as if he knew what she could do to him. “And a really bad guy.”

“Okay.” He reached for the kits filled with every medical aid possible. The bleeding needed to be stopped first, and then he could clean her up. “You’re going to be fine.”

“I _am_ fine.” 

His hands stilled, and he would’ve laughed if his mind didn’t flashback to all of the moments when he sat here or in the Foundry, bleeding everywhere, insisting he was fine. No wonder Felicity and Diggle would look at him with eyebrows raised. What a pathetic act he had been.

William beat him to a comment that had Mia trying to push herself up to no avail. “Talk to me about being fine when you’re not bleeding out of your freaking neck.”

Oliver put a steadying hand on her arm, and she fell back. “Hey. Let me patch you up, okay? And then we can talk about what’s going on. But you’re going to pass out if you don’t let me help you.”

“I…”

“Please, Mia?”

She looked up at him, her eyes different than what he imagined in his dreams. They were no longer innocent, sweet eyes. Just like his wife’s. He had watched her grow into a fighter, one who protected with her life, even if it meant pulling a trigger. Her eyes, the last time he’d seen them, no longer looked at him—at the world—how she did seven years ago. He could only hope and pray that Mia’s eyes would become the same. Hating evil and understanding of it. With a strong but gentle drive to wipe it out.

She would become that woman. He could see it in her eyes as she looked at him, trying to get past his walls. He let them down, one by one, so she and William could see inside. See the hurting man, the father who wanted to protect. _Please let them understand_. He left them both. To save the freakin’ universe. To save them.

“Okay.” She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. “It hurts.”

“I know.” He took her hand and squeezed, smiling when she returned the motion. “Believe it or not, but I’ve been on this table a few times in my life.”

“I know. Mom told me about how many times she patched you up.”

Oliver pointed to bandages in a bin, and William handed them to him. “She saved my life.”

“And mine,” William whispered, a smile playing on his face as he passed Oliver a string of bandages. There were questions in his eyes, not unlike the times Felicity would help with a mission and then give him the _look_. He would answer them the best he could, but how was he supposed to explain this? Or even understand how the heck his kids got here from 2040?

Twenty-year-old Oliver would’ve died of a heart attack if he knew of all of this.

All because he got on that boat. He wished he could travel back and ask his younger self if he had any idea that stepping on that boat with Sara would lead to all of this. It started as heartbreak, and for years, he never thought the guilt would ever go away. That all this pain would become something good. But it did. It came in the form of John Diggle and Felicity Smoak standing by his side through it all, then Roy, and Laurel’s forgiveness. Thea’s love. Quentin’s fatherly lead.

It all led to this. To this moment. To helping Mia stand and smiling at William as he moved to help his sister. For so long, he wished he could go back and change the hell he caused when he stepped onto that Gambit. Fire a bullet into his head for his treachery. Sometimes he still wanted to do it. But if hadn’t gotten on, hadn’t committed sin after sin, who would be with him now? The man he was today never would’ve came to be. Felicity never would’ve looked up at him, a red pen in her mouth. His mom wouldn’t have hired John, because Oliver would’ve been in prison, arrested by Quentin Lance.

And his children. He would have William, but would he know? Or would William have grown up without even _knowing_ of his father? At least he had that. Mia wouldn’t be here.

In a few months, he would die. How, he didn’t want to know. But he would draw his last breath. Better now, with people to mourn and remember him, than to die a man who bounced from woman to woman, determined to cause as much destruction to his soul as possible. Now, he would die a hero, a husband, and most importantly, a father who loved his children in a way he never imagined possible.


End file.
